BUSINESS, INNOVATION AND SKILLS

Insolvency Regime

Jennifer Willott: Everyone who is affected by insolvency should be able to have confidence that insolvency procedures are used fairly and that insolvency practitioners deliver the best possible outcome in what are often difficult and challenging circumstances. I am today announcing measures that will deal with abuse and misconduct and improve confidence in the insolvency regime and profession.
	These measures include the publication of the report the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills commissioned from Teresa Graham into pre-pack administration (“the Graham review”), together with associated research, as well as the Government’s response to the consultation, “Strengthening the regulatory regime and fee structure for insolvency practitioners”.
	Pre-pack sales are when arrangements are made to sell the viable parts of a failing business before it is announced that it has become insolvent, to make sure the best price is obtained.
	I am grateful for Ms Graham’s diligent work on the review and her well thought-out report and recommendations. The review finds that pre-pack administrations have an important place in the UK insolvency landscape, but that reforms should be brought forward to increase transparency, boost the survival rates of the purchaser business and reform practices that are correlated with lower distributions to creditors. The report proposes a package of reforms that I think will improve business confidence in the pre-pack process and improve returns to creditors.
	I welcome the report and I agree with all of the Graham review’s recommendations. It will now be the responsibility of industry and business to adopt the various voluntary measures proposed. The report also makes recommendations for how regulatory guidance might be strengthened and the Joint Insolvency Committee, which has responsibility for current guidance, will be looking at these recommendations.
	The report recommends, in addition, that the Government should take a backstop power to legislate if necessary. I very much hope that the voluntary package, together with strengthened guidance, will work effectively to address the concerns raised. However, I agree that it would be sensible to provide the recommended power and the Government plans to do so. Such a power would only be used if the voluntary reforms are not successfully implemented, as I hope they will be, by the market.
	I will be placing copies of the report and research in the Libraries of both Houses. Alternatively this can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/ graham-review-into-pre-pack-administration.
	I am also pleased to announce that following consultation, the Government will bring forward measures to strengthen the regulatory regime for insolvency practitioners by introducing regulatory objectives for the industry and appropriate powers for the Insolvency Service, as oversight regulator, to deal with poor performance or misconduct.
	That consultation also covered proposals relating to insolvency practitioner fees. A number of responses on the proposals to restrict the use of time and rate charging have been received, which we will be discussing further with interested parties before finalising the way forward. Our aim remains to ensure that insolvency practitioners receive fair remuneration for work properly carried out but also that creditors are getting the greatest return possible in the circumstances.
	A copy of the responses to the consultation can be found at:
	www.qov.uk/qovernment/consultations/insolvencv-practitioner-requlation-and-fee-structure.

Regional Growth Fund

Michael Fallon: I would like to take this opportunity to update the House on the progress of round 5 of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF). Following my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement on 10 April 2014, Ministers have concluded that an additional two projects and one additional programme will receive conditional offers as part of RGF round 5. This will mean round 5 of the RGF will invest £306 million to support 53 projects and programmes helping to create or safeguard 37,000 jobs and leverage £1.9 billion of private sector investment.
	The additional projects and programme for round 5 of the RGF are:
	South West
	Actavis UK Ltd
	Purico Paper Company Ltd
	Nationwide
	University of Lincoln (UoL) & UK Business Incubation Ltd (UKBI)

Student Support in England

David Willetts: In November 2013, I announced to the House of Commons that we suspected a number of Bulgarian and Romanian students studying at alternative providers may have been claiming maintenance support without meeting the requirement that they have been resident in the UK for at least three years.
	We then introduced more stringent evidence checks for all EU students studying in the UK applying for maintenance support and asked all EU students to supply additional information to support their applications, before any further public funding was made available to them or to their institutions. This means these students must have evidence, such as bank statements, utility bills, council tax records, payslips, and P60s, to support their residency claims.
	The results of this exercise are now available. Of the 11,191 students who we asked for additional residency evidence, 1,333 (12%) received a payment but were
	either unable to or chose not to demonstrate that they had been in the UK for the three years prior to the start of their study.
	Around £65 million was due to have been paid out to these individuals. As a result of our prompt action only £8 million was actually paid. We have taken immediate action to recover these sums and already have recovered around £2.5 million. Work continues to recover the rest including using debt collection agencies, court action, and if we find evidence of fraud, we may prosecute those involved.
	If any higher education provider is found to have been complicit in this, we will take the action against them directly.
	The decision to take this action and suspend payments to a large number of students is not one that we took lightly. I believe the results of the exercise fully vindicate our decision to take action. We have sought to limit the impact on genuine applicants. Where evidence has been provided to support a claim, payments have been reinstated.
	We have put in place a range of measures to ensure this does not happen again.
	More stringent residency evidence checks will remain in place for all new applications from EU students alongside checks for UK students. These require students to provide documentary evidence to support their claim to be resident in the UK.
	Any student who has failed to provide the required evidence will not be able to receive student support in future years, until such time as they do provide that evidence.
	We have asked other EU Governments to assist us in tracking down any of these students that have returned to their home countries without paying their outstanding debt. We are exploring how best to identify whether these students have returned to the UK.
	In alignment with the Cabinet Office Fraud, Error and Debt Taskforce appointed by the Prime Minister, we will carry out a fraud and debt review which will look at: the resilience of the entire student finance system; how we respond to fraud; and the powers of the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, Student Loans Company and partners have to tackle fraud.
	Some other EU countries require other nationals to be resident in their country for five years before they are eligible for the full package of student support. We will consult on whether student support in England should be made available on the same basis so as to ensure that scarce public funds go only to those who have a genuine attachment to the UK.
	We have commissioned a sampling exercise to investigate whether similar issues exist at publicly funded higher education providers.
	A full copy of the results of this exercise will be placed in the Libraries of the House.

COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Brownfield Land

Eric Pickles: The coalition Government are determined to make the very best use of derelict land and former industrial sites to help provide the homes this country desperately needs, in a way that protects our valued countryside. Further to the Mansion
	House speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Thursday 12 June and my written ministerial statement of 10 June 2014, Official Report , column 33WS, I would like to set out for hon. Members more information on the Government’s plans to increase house building on brownfield land.
	Councils will play a critical role in bringing forward suitable unused and previously developed land. They will consult on and put in place local development orders, which are a flexible, proactive way to provide outline planning permission for the scale and type of housing that can be built on sites. This will provide greater certainty for both builders and local residents, helping developers to work up suitable schemes and ultimately speeding up the building of new homes. Our aim is to see permissions in place on more than 90% of suitable brownfield sites by 2020—which could provide up to 200,000 new homes.
	We are providing a £5 million fund, to be launched before the summer, to support the first wave of new local development orders; we will also be providing a set of local development order “templates” for smaller brownfield sites, and will consult on other measures to underpin this programme later in the year. The Mayor of London will be given new powers to drive forward local development orders in the capital. But this drive for planning permissions will retain key safeguards—as with any planning application, councils will need to take account of the views of local people when preparing an order, as well as environmental issues like minimising flood risk.
	In addition, 20 new housing zones on this brownfield land in London will benefit from £400 million funding from the Government and the Greater London Authority. A further 10 zones outside London will be supported by an additional £200 million of Government funding for remediation and infrastructure to deliver new housing development. The Government funding will be in the form of recoverable investment. The London bidding prospectus was published on Friday 13 June by the Mayor and the Government will publish a prospectus inviting bids for housing zones in the rest of England shortly.
	As well as making the best use of brownfield land, we also want to ensure that existing housing estates in need of large-scale regeneration get the attention they deserve. In addition to improving the quality of properties, it also has the potential to deliver additional new homes on existing land. On Friday, I published a prospectus outlining how developers can bid for a share of a £150 million loan fund to invest in kick-starting and accelerating the regeneration of some of the country’s most deprived social housing estates.
	These measures, taken together with our existing policies and initiatives, will remove obstacles to developing suitable brownfield sites, ensuring that we focus on building the new homes we need while protecting the green spaces we all value.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2014-17

William Hague: I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together
	with the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, published on 12 June 2014 our “National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, 2014-17”.
	The national action plan is a tool to enable us to articulate our priorities on women, peace and security and co-ordinate implementation of our work at national level. It serves as a guiding national policy document that is able to capture the diverse set of initiatives on this agenda taking place within the UK Government across our security, foreign policy and development work. It outlines the results that we expect these initiatives to bring. It serves to provide direction and vision for our staff and partners to ensure that women and girls are at the centre of all our efforts to prevent, resolve and respond to conflict.
	The UK has a strong global reputation on women, peace and security, which I am committed to maintaining. We play a lead role at the United Nations Security Council on women, peace and security, including on debates and ensuring the role of women features in the mandates of peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions. The landmark UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security has been built on by six new resolutions, and calls on UN member states to adopt and deliver national action plans. The UK was one of the first countries to publish a national action plan in 2006. It was revised in 2010 for a further three years.
	The aim of this latest three-year national action plan is to put women and girls at the centre of all UK efforts to prevent and resolve conflict, to promote peace and stability, and to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. It sets out our intent to strengthen our ability to reduce the impact of conflict on women and girls and to promote their inclusion in conflict resolution. As well as bringing together all of the UK Government’s activities on this area, it shows the depth and breadth of our work on the women, peace and security agenda. It builds on the momentum generated from the range of women, peace and security-related initiatives including the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, DFID’s strategic vision for girls and women, including broader work on violence against women and girls, and the call to action on protecting women in emergencies.
	This national action plan focuses specifically on tackling the challenge to advance women and girl’s participation, to prevent violence against women and girls and protect them from it, to provide targeted relief and recovery, and to build UK national capacity to deliver all of this. It signals the UK Government’s continuing commitment to the agenda in our focus countries, which include: Afghanistan, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Somalia and Syria—as well as work at home. In identifying these countries, we have considered whether it is a priority country for the work of all three Departments and of the National Security Council and that through our local consultations in-country, we have determined there is local appetite for change.
	Government staff working in UK embassies and DFID offices in conflict-affected states have been consulted, as have women who have been or who are affected by conflict. This plan reaffirms this Government’s ambition to work as one to pursue visible change for women and girls affected by conflict, including in partnership with NGOs, Parliament and our international partners.
	We will develop and publish an implementation plan, including indicators and baseline data on this national action plan by the end of 2014. For the first time, this baseline data will be used as a benchmark to assess UK efforts on women, peace and security throughout the life of this national action plan and will further articulate the key actions to be undertaken together by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence. This national action plan will be reported on annually from autumn 2015. The annual reports will be deposited in Parliament and shared with the Associate Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security.
	I am placing a copy of the national action plan in the Library of the House.

WORK AND PENSIONS

“Fuller Working Lives: A Framework for Action”

Steve Webb: On Friday 13 June, the Government published “Fuller Working Lives—A Framework for Action”. This follows a commitment set out in the Government response to the House of Lords Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change report of Session 2012-13: “Ready for Ageing?”
	Around 2.9 million people aged between 50 and state pension age are currently out of work and the effects of early labour market exit can be catastrophic for an individual, particularly in terms of their ultimate retirement income. In addition to the sudden drop in income and possibly finding themselves reliant on working age benefits, individuals also lose the benefits of workplace pension provision. There can also be negative effects for health and wider well-being when an individual leaves the labour market in an unplanned way.
	The framework for action sets out the business case for retaining and recruiting older workers at the individual, business and societal-level. It also draws together the important steps that the Government are already taking which will promote fuller working lives.
	In addition, we announced:
	that DWP is working with local enterprise partnerships to encourage them to focus on the issue of fuller working lives in their local area;
	that DWP, alongside Department of Health and Government Equalities Office, are launching a two-year pilot on what works to support carers to remain in employment;
	a pilot with Jobcentre Plus on employment support for carers;
	that we will develop a new guidance toolkit for employers which will build on the existing Age Positive employer guidance; and
	we will also shortly be confirming the appointment of an older workers business champion.
	We know that once out of work, older people are more likely to become long-term unemployed or inactive and it is for that reason that Government are particularly focused on what we can do to help older workers retain their jobs in the first place. In particular, carers, disabled
	people, those with health conditions and those made redundant are at risk of permanently leaving the labour market.
	Over the decade to 2022, population projections suggest there will be 700,000 fewer people in the UK aged 16-49, but 3.7 million more aged 50 to state pension age. By 2020 over 50s will comprise almost one third of the working-age population and we simply cannot afford to ignore older workers. We also know that GDP could have been £18 billion higher in 2013 if the employment gap between people in their 40s and those aged 50 to state pension age was halved.
	A fuller working life is about giving individuals the chance to increase their financial security in later life. Sometimes this might mean a change of job or a different working pattern that is more suitable to their lifestyle needs, or support to manage a health condition or disability. To help people to continue working the
	Government have abolished the default retirement age meaning most people can now retire when the time is right for them. Enabling older people who can work to stay in work is not only critical to the economy and pensions sustainability, but also to the financial, health and social well-being of individuals.
	The “Fuller Working Lives—Framework for Action” can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuller-working-lives-a-framework-for-action.
	The supporting “Background Evidence” document which sets out the analysis that has informed the development of the framework for action can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuller- working-lives-background-evidence.
	I have placed a copy of “Fuller Working Lives—A Framework for Action” and “Fuller Working Lives—Background Evidence” in the House Libraries.